A/N: Their plan is set into motion, and an old, familiar (but not friendly) face appears. This is how it ends...
DISCLAIMER: SVU and related characters/ideas belong to Dick Wolf. Original plot and dialogue belong to TStabler©
Three days. Three days of watching them grope each other, of hearing the sounds of their lovemaking, of being threatened. How the hell they'd even found out about the real plan was beyond him, but now they were blackmailing him. They held him at gunpoint three days ago, made him give up his weapon and cell phone and tell them everything, and if that wasn't enough, they had been torturing him ever since.
For the last three days they'd been exhibitionists; doing their job, then coming home and doing each other, not even closing the bedroom door. Or bathroom door. Or kitchen gate. Or entrance to wherever the hell they decided to go at it.
Needless to say, Dean Porter was not having the best time. "Are you two done yet?" he yelled, knowing he wouldn't get an answer. "Jesus, I'd give anything to…"
"We're done," Elliot said, coming out of the bedroom in jeans, no shirt, Olivia at his side in a tee shirt with no pants. He wrapped an arm around her and said, "Give us ten minutes to get dressed, then we can go get the bad guys. With the help of the people I called, to keep you from taking her anywhere." He narrowed his eyes as Dean's widened.
"Who did you call?" Dean asked, fearful.
Olivia smirked. "Ghostbusters," she joked, her nails slowly grazing up and down Elliot's bare back.
"Funny," Dean snapped. "Seriously, who did you call?"
"Cragen," Elliot said, pulling a tee shirt on over his head. He smirked at Olivia, as his eyes ran up and down her body, and he jerked his head toward the bedroom, telling her to get dressed.
She kissed him, slowly and deliberately sensual, and then she turned to leave the room.
Once she was gone, Elliot sat across from Porter, reaching for his sneakers. "I called Cragen," he said again, tying his shoes. "Who, in turn, called your director. You're in a shitload of trouble, man. They're gonna meet us at the drop spot, wait down the block, and when we give them the signal, they'll come in, rushing the guy."
Dean grunted. A pitiful noise, but all he could do. "She wasn't gonna be in any danger, Stabler, you're making too big a deal out of this."
"I'm making a big deal about you setting us up? About you planning to kidnap me and my partner?" Elliot asked, standing. "I didn't make a big enough deal," he grumbled, making sure his gun was loaded. As he holstered it and pulled down his shirt over the belt, he said, "I should have let her shoot you. Lord knows she wanted to."
Dean shuddered. He remembered the look in Olivia's eyes when she was aiming her gun at his head. They were cold, gray, and the smirk on her face was pure maniacal. She wanted to shoot him. Elliot had to calm her down, talk her out of it. He had to pry the gun out of her hands. "Yeah," Dean sighed. "She did."
"I still do," Olivia said, walking out of the bedroom in a white maternity dress, her big, albeit fake, belly seemed to make her glow, as if she really was pregnant.
"I don't doubt that," Dean said, shaking his head. "Get in the car," he told them. "Let's get this over with."
Elliot smirked. "You don't make the rules anymore," he said, taking Olivia's hand. "You're going out first, and you're sitting in the back." He grabbed the keys, tossed them into the air, and caught them. "Or she'll shoot you."
"I believe you," Dean said, sighing as he stood up. He followed Olivia and Elliot out of the house, hoping the man to whom he'd promised Olivia wouldn't be too upset.
Olivia was the first one out of the car, her belly concealing a wire and her gun. Elliot had strapped a tape recorder and small microphone to her chest, picking up all of Dean's blathering in the car as well as anything their "baby-buyer" might say.
She walked out into the middle of the road, and she looked both ways as she crossed the street to wait by the bench, their scheduled meeting spot. She saw, through a break in the trees, the two black cars that housed her captain and three other detectives. She was safe. She felt Elliot beside her then, taking her hand, and they let out a simultaneous sigh.
"We're okay," he whispered into her hair, placing a small kiss behind her ear.
She nodded, then held her breath as she saw a small, red jeep pull up across the street. The man got out of the car, and he saw them immediately. He ran across the street, ignoring the honking horns of the oncoming traffic.
Elliot squeezed her hand, reassuring her they were going to be fine, and he held out his other hand to the man approaching them. "Mister Reynolds," he said, nodding. "Thank you so much for meeting us."
The man smirked. "You have something I have great need for," he said. "It's really my pleasure. When, exactly, can we expect this little bundle to arrive?"
"Two weeks," Elliot said, resting one hand on her bump. "It's so hard to give him up, but we don't really have a choice. My parents are very…"
"I know your story," the man said. "So it's a boy then? That changes things. The price for a boy is…substantially higher."
Elliot looked at Olivia. She cleared her throat and asked, "So you're saying…you would give us more money for a boy?"
The man nodded. "I would be getting more for a boy, in turn giving you more. How does…say…Fifty-Three Thousand sound?"
Elliot's eyes bulged. "For…wow, that sounds…that sounds pretty damn good." He hoped the mic under Olivia's shirt picked that up; it was the phrase that would signal them to come into the mix.
The man laughed, then pulled out a gun and grabbed Olivia's arm. "However," he said, "It's much cheaper if I just take the girl." He held the gun to Olivia's head and said, "If you're smart, you'll just let me walk away. And don't even think about pulling that gun on me."
Elliot's eyes widened.
"That's right," the man said. "I know. And I know you won't risk her life by trying to save her right now." The man cocked the trigger and chuckled again. "Or do you wanna prove me wrong?"
Stunned, scared, and angry, Elliot watched the man pull Olivia across the street, the gun to her temple, as she struggled to get free. He heard the cars rounding the corner as he watched Olivia being forced into the jeep. Terrified, he watched the man drive away, but the two black cars, thanks to the wire she was wearing, knew what had happened and followed closely behind her.
Elliot ran toward the blue sedan, got in, and peeled out fast. He shouted to Dean in the backseat, "You son of a bitch!"
"I had nothing to do with this," Dean defended. The smirk on his face, though, proved him wrong.
He was driving as fast as he could, but they were too far gone. He'd lost them. There was nothing to do now but wait, and hope that the man wouldn't kill her when he found out her baby was fake. Or keep her when he found out, in nine months, it would be all too real.
The drive back to the city was quiet, long; they'd heard nothing from Olivia or Cragen, or Fin. Dean was sitting in an empty desk, watching Elliot pace back and forth in the squad room.
Three people walked through the doors, then, and Dean sat up straighter. "Hey, Stabler," he said. "You got company."
Elliot turned, expecting to see Olivia, but he was just as happy to see who it really was. "Mo, baby." He dropped to floor and let the tiny girl run into his arms. "I missed you, honey."
"Mom?" she questioned, looking sadly into her father's eyes.
He looked up at his mother, waiting in the doorway, and then he looked back down at the girl. "She'll be back soon," he said. He swallowed the guilt he felt for lying to her, for lying to himself. He lifted her into his arms and let her drape herself over his shoulder. He looked at his mother, and then noticed the woman to her right.
"Hello, Elliot," the young blonde said.
Elliot's eyes narrowed. "Kathy," he hissed out. "What are you doing here?"
"I stayed with your mom, and our daughter, while you were gone. I…I missed her. She doesn't know I'm her mother, Elliot, I had to fix that."
"She has a mother," he spat. "A mother who…" he blinked, letting a tear fall. He shook his head, not wanting to talk, or even think about it anymore.
Dean, his hands cuffed to the desk, sighed as he said, "Look, for what it's worth, your girl is smart. Tough. She'll get out of this."
"She's in this mess because of you," Elliot said harshly, turning around. "You never…you told him about her, and because you knew that we wouldn't let you take her, and Brian Cassidy couldn't be there…you set this up you son of a bitch, I know you did."
Dean smirked. "You're giving me far too much credit," he said. "You took my phone, remember? You didn't let me out of the house at all after you found out what the plan was."
Elliot squinted. He had a point. He grunted and turned around again, only to come face to face with Kathy. "Move," he said to her.
She shook her head, looking into his eyes. "You need me right now. You need a friend, Elliot. Don't deny that, like you always have. You need a little comfort."
Elliot sighed, his eyes closed, and his head dropped onto Kathy's shoulder. Kathy's hands sunk into his head, stroking his hair. She heard sniffles and felt his body heaving. For the first time, as long as she'd known him, she actually saw him cry.
"Where's mommy?" Maureen asked, her voice heartbreakingly soft.
"I don't know," Elliot said just as quietly. "Baby, I just don't know."
Cragen and the other detectives had come back, with Reynolds in cuffs. Olivia wasn't with them. "She wasn't in the jeep," Fin explained with a sad shrug, "And this hump ain't talkin.'"
Days flew by, and then weeks, and then months. No word at all, from anyone, about what had become of Olivia Benson. Life in the One-Six seemed to move on around him. He had a new partner, contract be damned, and Porter was given six months for conspiracy, then released, back into the open arms of the FBI, where he promised to do everything he could to find Olivia.
His daughter had celebrated a birthday, and her only wish was to have the woman she considered her mother come home. He watched, sad and tired, as she blew out the candles, knowing that if that ever happened, a little brother or sister would be coming home, too. Unless his calculations were wrong. He prayed they were wrong. He wanted to be there.
He had hoped their plan would have worked, that they were just as manipulative as the people around him. They had taken her away from him once, for less time, and he was a mess, and absolute wreck. They wanted to make them feel guilty again, this time knowing, or at least thinking she was in real danger.
He'd waited for as long as he could, keeping up the charade, pretending he had no idea where she was, but she should have been home long ago. She should have been back, she should have been done. Something had gone wrong, and now the fear and the aching, the loss, it was real. Too real.
He was handling some mind-numbing paperwork, thinking about how he'd almost given in once, almost caved to his depression and his desperate need to feel something, and almost slept with Kathy, and how she told him she wouldn't fault him, or mind, if he murmured and moaned Olivia's name. He refused, he walked away, and he'd felt guilty, so guilty, for weeks because he'd even thought about it, and he promised it wouldn't happen again. His thoughts never drifted from Olivia. He was lost in those thoughts, pen in hand, when something caught his attention. Something familiar. The sound of her voice.
He turned, looking at a small TV set on Fin's desk. "What the hell…"
"Shh," Fin snapped.
There she was, on a news program, walking behind some officers who were hauling two men in cuffs into a building. It looked like their building, actually, and the reporters were asking questions they weren't getting answers to. She looked amazing, and she looked very pregnant.
"Oh, my God," Elliot breathed. He shot out of his seat, ran out into the hall, and waited impatiently by the elevator. When the doors slid opened, he waited for the armed, uniformed men to bring the cuffed guys out. He waited for them to move out of his way, and then he ran. He ran fast. Hard. Almost knocking her over.
She wrapped her arms around him, she let out a sigh of relief as silent tears fell onto his shoulder. "We got 'em," she whispered.
He sniffled as he held her. "Honey…were you…did you…do we have…"
She nodded into his chest. "Everything's fine. I know…you left messages, and texts, but I couldn't answer you. It was awful, I had to…God, the things I had to see there."
"But you got 'em," he said to her. He kissed her lips and he looked into her eyes. "You got both of 'em, baby."
"We did," she said. "You had to keep people out of the loop here, you had to…you had to do what you had to do. It was just as much you as it was me."
He kissed her again, holding her in his arms, and he ran his lips over her chin and neck. "Never again," he said. "I don't care if it was my idea. This is never happening again."
"You…" she blinked, knowing what she wanted to ask, finding it hard. "You and Kathy…are you two together, or were you? I just...I have to know, El."
"I called you…told you…I left a message, I mean," he babbled. "Almost, but no. It wasn't something…I couldn't…I couldn't do it. I couldn't betray you, us."
"I know," she said with a sigh and a small smile. "You told my phone everything. I just wanted to make sure you weren't lying to me." She swiped her thumbs under his eyes. "I have to hand in some reports, explain a few things to Cragen. Then I wanna go home and spend some time with you and Maureen," she said.
He nodded. "Sounds perfect," he said. He watched her walk away and he called her back to him. "Liv?"
She turned back to him, a gleam in her eyes. "El?"
He walked over to her, kissed her, and said, "I never got to ask you…before…everything happened so fast...I..." he stopped. He took a breath. "Marry me."
She smirked. She kissed him again and whispered, "As if I ever had an alternative."
A/N: Another story concluded. Be on the lookout for a new one soon!
